The Martyrdom of the Needle
A fiery plea from the pulpit for women's right to work and fair wages.
The story, cleaned up
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It is said if woman is given such opportunities she will occupy places that might be taken by men. I say if she has her skill and adaptation for any position than a man has, let her have it. She has as much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home as men have. But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is unfitted for exhausting toil. I say in the name of all past history what toil on earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than that toil of the needle to which for ages she has been subjected? The battering-ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-ax have made no such havoc as the needle. I would that those living sepulchers in which women have for ages been buried might be opened and that some resurrection trumpet might bring up those living corpses to the fresh air and sunlight. Go with me and I will show you a woman who by hardest toil supports her children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays her house rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and when she can get some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of her family, appears in church with hat and cloak that are far from indicating the toil to which she is subjected. Such a woman as that has body and soul enough to fit her for any position. We talk about women as though we had resigned to her all the light work, and ourselves had shouldered the heavier. But the day of judgment, which will reveal the sufferings of the stake and inquisition, will marshal before the throne of God and the hierarchy of Heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and needle.
“Oh, the meanness, the despicability of men who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere in any honorable calling.”
Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage’s 1880 sermon echoes contemporary debates regarding the gendered labor market and the invisibility of low-wage domestic and service work. Just as he challenged the 19th-century 'delicate' stereotype to justify women's economic independence, modern Seattle continues to grapple with the systemic undervaluation of care work and the struggle for a living wage in a high-cost environment.
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